Ohayōgozaimasu, MoodleMoot Japan 2017

Ohayōgozaimasu, good morning from Utsunomiya, Japan. Today starts a weekend of Moodle fun with my friends in the Moodle Association of Japan; it’s MootJP17.

I’m very excited to be back. I had attended Moodle Moot Japan 2015 in Kyoto and it was a fantastic experience. I presented on “Moodle and the Internet of Things“, the same topic I also presented at Moodle Moot Australia that same year. I often think of MootJP15 as the conference that really started me down the presentation role, although my presentation at WCSYD14 predates that. I suppose it was at MootJP15 that I first presented on the Internet of Things.

I will do a short lightning talk this year entitled “Moodle and the Internet of Things Redux”, which is more inline with the IoT Moodle experiments I have been working on lately – namely seeing if Moodle will run on SBCs and what kind of performance will result. I’m also going to present on competencies from a perspective of my duties at SWSi TAFE. We have to deal with Competency Based Education under ASQA’s rules at TAFE and I’ve experimented with using the competencies introduced in Moodle 3.1 (and improved on in Moodle 3.2) to accommodate these requirements. I’ve presented on this at the most recent MoodlePosium in December and the Mini iMoot in November.

I’m looking forward to catching up with some old friends as well. Amongst them:

Don Hinkelman was a keynote speaker prior to my presentation at MootAU15; he introduced the audience (and myself) to the word “Bricoleur“, and apparently my presentation was inline “who is a Bricoleur?”

Hideto Harashima, the President of the Moodle Association of Japan and a Committee Member of the Moodle Users Association. Dr. Harashima was very intimidating to present to the last time I was here. The crowd was on the small side and he’s a difficult man to read while presenting. I was convinced the crowd did not like my IoT presentation at all. Later, Dr. Harashima told me how much he enjoyed my presentation. It was a great feeling of relief.

Martin Dougiamas is here as well. He’s got something to do with Moodle. It’s always good when we have a chat.

On a personal level, I enjoyed my last trip to Japan immensely, so I’m very pleased to be back in this wonderful country. It’s great to be here too for Moodle and eLearning. I always enjoy conferences and each has their own feel. Even the different Moots have their own feel – they’re all about Moodle, but they just have different crowds, different themes, different ideas. They’re all my favourite, but I enjoyed the Japanese one the last time I was here.

I suppose much of that is the country itself. Japan is a fascinating place, and I find it’s accessible. Yes things are very foreign to me, and I suffer from a huge language barrier here, but the Japanese people I meet are the most friendly, most polite and most helpful people I have ever met. That is incredibly difficult to admit to as a Canadian. Arigatou gozaimasu Tokyo, Utsumomiya and Tochigi for the hospitality you again offered me yesterday when I arrived.

Bring on the Moot!

The Tokyo SkyTree is the tallest tower in the world. Did I go up to the Tembo Galleria (450m)? You bet I did!

Tokyo, from the SkyTree. That’s Mount Fuji in the background, and yes that haze doesn’t look so good on this winter morning. It’s amazing to see the scale of Tokyo from up here. It’s almost harder to fathom how big Tokyo is when you see how endless it is in one vista.

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